Taiwan agrees to 15% reduction in bluefin tuna catch

SMALL FRY:：The Asia-Pacific agreement focuses on catches of tuna three years and younger, which need to mature and breed before they can be fished

AFP, TOKYO

Fri, Sep 06, 2013 - Page 4

Asia-Pacific fishing nations and territories agreed yesterday to cut catches of young bluefin tuna by 15 percent, with an agreement environmentalists said would not stop overfishing.

Nine economies, including Taiwan, the US, China and South Korea, concluded a four-day meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission in Fukuoka, Japan.

The participants agreed to reduce their total catches of bluefin tuna aged three years or younger next year by 15 percent of the average from 2002 to 2004, a Japanese fisheries agency official said.

The US had proposed a 25 percent reduction, but a majority of participants, concerned about the impact on local fishing industries, would only agree on the 15 percent cut proposed by Japan, the official said.

The accord will be endorsed at the commission’s annual assembly in December in Australia, the official added.

Greenpeace immediately denounced the reduction, saying only a total ban on catching bluefin tuna — at least until a sign of clear recovery of the species can be confirmed — was enough.

Greenpeace also called on Japan — the world’s biggest consumer of tuna — to take the lead in adopting effective measures “to assure the sustainability of fishing bluefin tuna in the Pacific.”

Environmentalists say industrial-scale fishing that takes large amounts of young tuna from the ocean before they are old enough to breed is destroying the population of a fish highly prized in Japan’s sushi restaurants.

The commission was formed in 2004 based on a UN treaty to conserve and manage tuna and other highly migratory fish stocks across the western and central areas of the Pacific.